After decades, Lighthouse Christian Book and Gift closing

June 19--MANKATO -- For nearly 40 years the Lighthouse Christian Book and Gift Shop has been the place where generations have marked baptisms, first communions, graduations and weddings with special gifts.

What most shoppers didn't know is that the decades of profits from the store all went to building churches in Third World countries, from India to Cuba.

At the end of the month the store, just atop the Madison Avenue hill, will close its doors as it faces the pressures of online retailing that have affected so many brick and mortar businesses.

"It's bittersweet. I think we'll be missed," said owner Cathy Bristol. "Retail has just changed and it's tough for small family businesses."

Her son, Matt Bristol, who has long managed the store, said they will begin a closing sale Monday that will last until the end of June.

He said many churches and individuals who used to buy from them now order directly from companies online. And the store was in need of high-cost upgrades for computer systems and new chip reader technology.

"And the environment of retail, with all the online, has just changed," Matt Bristol said.

The store was originally opened in St. Peter by other owners in 1978 and Bristol bought into it the next year and moved it to Mankato, relocating to what was then the new Village East strip mall at the corner of Hoffman Road and Victory Drive South.

"The only two tenants there were us and a liquor store," she said. "People got a laugh out of that, but we got along really well with him."

In 1989 they built the free-standing building they now occupy. Next door is a small standalone building that houses the office of State Farm Insurance, owned and operated by her husband, Lonnie Bristol. They plan to keep the Lighthouse building. Lonnie Bristol is continuing to operate his insurance business.

While the store had decades of solid sales and profits, recent years have been a strain.

"With music, people download it digitally now," Matt said. The store now sells about one-third of the Christian music it once did.

And he said churches that used to buy communion cups and wafers, curriculum, certificates and bulletins from them now order them online.

Individuals buy more online and many don't buy religious gifts often at all, he said. "People are more apt to give money as a gift for confirmation or a baptism. Years ago everyone got gifts for occasions like that."

Cathy never took any profits out of the book and gift store, instead using the funds to support a mission of church building that the Bristol family and others in the community became involved in long ago.

She was serving on a national board when she happened to meet Dois Rosser, a wealthy east coast auto chain dealer who along with the Rev. Dick Woodward created Trans World Radio and later the International Cooperating Ministries whose mission is to build churches and supply support to those in poor neighborhoods around the world.

Rosser asked Bristol to go to India, a trip that started her involvement in building several churches around the world. Volunteers pay for their own trips, and ICM uses funds set up in a foundation by Rosser to cover the group's overhead costs so that every dollar donated goes directly to church building.

"People give a dollar and a dollar is spent," Bristol said.

The international trips made by her and Lonnie and others from Mankato brought them into places of desperate poverty and sometimes involved unofficial travel arrangements.

In 2001 they traveled to Cuba. At the time the U.S. government was unable to sanction such a trip, but the State Department acknowledged in a letter that they knew the trip was happening. The Cuban church officials lining up the trip knew government officials, including one who knew Fidel Castro.

"We flew to the Bahamas and then a Cuban plane picked us up. They just had us fill out our visas while we were in the air," Bristol said.

She said the Cuban government was not averse to them coming as they brought money and things like baseball equipment that was donated to local groups.

"They liked us coming in," Bristol said. "We'd declare how much money we were bringing in to build a church and it gave people there work."

Bristol said the churches, while often one of the better buildings around, were built relatively inexpensively, often for a few thousand dollars to about $20,000 for the Cuban church. The buildings are used for more than worship, serving as training centers to help women earn livings and as child care centers.

Bristol said they never made a big public splash out of her family's and other local residents' involvement in the church-building work.

"People asked why we didn't talk more about what we did," she said. "It's not our legacy, it's God's."

Follow Tim Krohn on Twitter @TimKrohn

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